About
the Book:
She Persisted contains 100 of the top monologues for both
women and men from recent plays. Veteran editor Lawrence Harbison,
a man who has spent his career championing new and established
playwrights by bringing their work into print, has selected a rich
and varied selection of monologues from plays by some of the finest
women playwrights, who happen to be over forty. Although the age of
the character is given in each monologue, many may be done by actors
of any age.
The book was spearheaded by Honor Roll!, an advocacy group of
women over forty.
"Honor Roll! is an advocacy and
action group of women+ playwrights over forty – and our allies –
whose goal is our inclusion in theater. The term "women+"
refers to a spectrum of gender identification that includes women,
non-binary identifiers, and trans. We are the generation excluded at
the outset of our careers because of sexism, now overlooked because
of ageism. We celebrate diversity in theater, and work to call
attention to the negative impact of age discrimination alongside
gender, race, ethnicity, faith, socioeconomic status, disability, and
sexual orientation in the American Theatre and beyond."
"These women are in their forties
and fifties and sixties, and they have been writing a long time, and
they are at the height of their craft. These are tight, complex,
nuanced pieces of writing, which no one has seen because for too long
they weren't looking."
"These are important writers, and
important plays." — Theresa Rebeck, from the
introduction
She Persisted: One
Hundred Monologues from Plays by Women Over Forty includes
monologues from:
• 110 Stories by Sarah Tuft
• Chicken and the Egg by Dana Leslie Goldstein
• Looking for the Pony by Andrea Lepcio
• Poolside by T. Cat Ford
• Splitting Infinity by Jamie Pachino
• Thin Walls by Alice Eve Cohen
• Zoom Birthday Party by Saviana Stanescu
About the Editor:
Lawrence Harbison was in
charge of new play acquisitions for Samuel French for over thirty
years, where his work on behalf of playwrights resulted in the first
publication of such subsequent luminaries as Jane Martin,
Don Nigro,Tina
Howe, Theresa Rebeck,
José Rivera, William
Mastrosimone, and Ken
Ludwig, among many others. He
has served as literary manager or literary consultant for several New
York theatres, and has also
served many times over the years as a judge and commentator for
various national play contests and lectures regularly at colleges and
universities.